You cannot stay at the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place?
Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below doesn’t know what is above.
One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen.
– Rene Daumal
Most of us climb the mountains of practical things on a day-to-day basis. We trek the worries of money, time, health and appetites. But I think the mountains that we are ultimately faced with — and those we should be bothering with– are the mountains of relationships. People. The most inexhaustible anything in this world.
In the course of painting and drawing everyday, I’ve been moving consciously towards finding beauty in everything– and it’s wonderful — but I find the beauty in people most inexhaustible.
People as our daily mountains. Who are the mountains that haunt you, that give you peace, that leave you inspired and humbled?
I’ve heard the word assault used to refer to climbing a mountain, and I feel it’s misplaced. As opposed to carrying out this task in violence, I say do it with love. Hike it, prepare for it, do a pitstop, then ascend again, but gently, and lovingly. To climb is automatically thought of as difficult, and beautifully so, don’t you think?
And to have this lovingliness in approaching people everyday…wow.
If we truly ask and seek, though, we will know as true that the highest and most overbearing mountain is the one inside us… and maybe this is the one that needs our love most of all.
Spent last Tuesday at the beach, on my second plein air painting session. Was a hot and humid day but I was just happy to finally understand (or begin to understand) why so many artists brave the elements of painting outdoors.
Standing on a hill facing this cliff gave me a surge of energy that one only feels in the open sea… wind blowing from all directions, waves flapping on the distant shore, and me, from my little gazebo — thankful for the midday shade– imagining the splishsplash music on those rocks across, with the white foam dancing on top and the fishes underneath joining in the merrymaking. Imagined there was a happy midday party going on, and I was a quiet observer, maybe out of place and imposing…but then again, maybe not.
Painting brings me so much joy, and on days like this, I remember why I have so much to be thankful for.
Scene 1 was down by the beach itself, with sand and saltwater all over me. Was a raw enough experience to paint on the sand, with my legs as my easel, and with passing clouds as shade.
Can’t wait to have more of these.
Thank you to my painting group, L’arc en Ciel, for the warm welcome and friendship.
Painting has become my default answer to the question, “What makes you happy?” But for over 10 years now, I’ve been saying it without actually living it. Someone I’d just met called me out on it recently– I haven’t seriously painted either because #1 I’m lazy, or #2 I’m scared to find out that I don’t have what it takes, or that it’s not for me (doesn’t make me happy). Sometimes it takes a stranger to put you in your place and jumpstart what needs jumpstarting.
This year, 2013, I had a mindset change. I decided that I wouldn’t hide behind the money aspect of painting anymore (“I don’t want to be a poor artist”) and just go for it 100%. Not as a hobby I pick up more passionately when business is good, and not as an activity I act on when random inspiration hits. Important belief shift: I can make a living and support a family with my art.
To be fair and gentle with myself, I haven’t been idle in trying to get in front of the canvas. I’d brought out books on Chagall and Klee as early as October 2012, looking for paintings I’d like to copy. A painter friend once told me that was how he learned — just intuitively copying the masters. My Bargue plates are also ready and waiting for me to get back into drawing again, although just reading through the painstaking process of learning the sight-size method is overwhelming me already. Baby steps. I’ve also picked out dream schools I’d like to go to for further studies — I wish there were more classical ateliers in the Philippines — and have begun the arduous process of letting go of my house, which in truth is my latest art piece (a 2-year labor of love!).
Why hadn’t I painted? My simplest answer: I had nothing to paint.
Last week, I decided to just pick out a favorite doodle and translate it onto the canvas. There was something crucial about the first piece to come out after my hiatus, and I wanted it to be true to where I was in my life…a beacon to ready the path.
Doodling became my output of choice when I began my house project in 2010. Zero set up, pack up, and drying time — it was heaven sent for busy me who lived on the go.
Now that I have a well-ventilated, well-lit studio and the stillness and quietude of having time, I have no excuse not to pick up the brush and work with oils again. A friend has called it my homecoming.
I came out with this painting initially thinking it was almost done. One look at it and my brother said: more texture. I realized that too; I painted it in a flurry. I had gotten used to painting with quick-drying gouache and acrylics, I’d forgotten the texturing that oils lent.
The painting looked flatter and more lifeless than I would’ve wanted — and it didn’t have the whimsical spirit of the doodle. Although there are times that I’d welcome a flat image, something was amiss here. Masyadong manipis.
I played around with the waves, and ended up layering.
While re-doing the waves, I kept thinking, “All this feels very personal, this call for texture. I’m in my 30’s now, and the layering applies to every aspect of my life — relationships, business, food, health. Di na pwedeng mababaw.” And this texturing is not of hodgepodge, random layers. It’s a decluttered layering, hindi maingay. Every layer is meaningful, mindful. But not without the surprise of possibility.
The flowers needed extra TLC as well. Old habits get unearthed when given the opportunity– I found myself doing Van Gogh-inspired strokes.
With the waves, flowers and clouds layered, I kept staring at the ground and felt it needed to breathe some more.
Didn’t know what wanted to come out, but ended up playing with greens:
I worked on outlining the areas I wanted to pop out, and knew it was time to put the brush down when all I could do while looking at the painting was smile. 🙂
It’s a happy painting, and I’m happy that this was what came out as my first comeback to oil.
I had so much leftover paint on the palette, and just played around with other doodle translations.
Already bought bigger canvases, will see what comes out next.
I know I have so much to learn, and it will take the best of me to proceed with courage and caution at once. Would love to pick up where I left off with my acrylics in 2010— was working on learning to paint people.
After working with oils for a weekend, though, I’ve been reintroduced to the patience that painting demands. I know what this will ask of me. Will be gentle and patient, and also rigorous and unrelenting.
If you’d like a look at my 2010 series of paintings (acrylics), visit my flickr album.
I’ve been attending weekly study groups on inner work, and I’ve been out and about more than the usual — partying, drinking, eating.
A friend recently pointed out that one can’t do both at once. And it’s true. They cancel each other out. No gains to be had from either one.
All the inner work is set aside when I’m out and about, and all the lightness and pleasant randomness of an active social life gets a guilty vibe once I pick up books on authenticity and soul work.
Used to say this a lot. Then the world of heartbreak and responsibilities happened.
Glad to say I’m slowly believing it again.
Vacillate. We are always swaying.
It’s healthy.
Two mindsets* : Positive mindset is firm, not easily swayed by externalities. Most passionate people are of this mindset. Negative mindset is a sponge, easily influenced by the outside: people, events, experiences. Negative people are chameleons — they change along with the people they’re with.
We can’t hold on to either extreme. To be healthy and progressive (as opposed to stagnant), we swing. No other way. To deny the swinging is to deny the truth.
And now, I’m swinging negative. The world is my oyster, it’s going to be a sponge year.
Bright-eyed and in wonderland, I say “Hello, 2013.”
How are you swinging this year, this month, this week?
—-
*Loosely summarized from Rudolph Steiner’s Transforming the Soul.
I finally set up my studio yesterday, and the possibilities of play and just getting busy with my hands again — they’re just so tangible now. If there is such a thing as smelling joy and the future, I’m smelling them right now.
Hugs to you, friends.
May you know what your chirpy pill is, and may you have 1) access to it, and 2) the courage to pursue it everyday.
A friend recently referred to dating as having a love interest, and it made me realize how clean that phrase is.
Love interest.
No pretenses, no ambiguous meaning or indirect association with which to confuse it.
It is clean cut. It captures romance, not to trivialize it, but quite the opposite — to make it more explicit.
“I am seeking a love interest” is an honest intent, and whoever uses it, allows himself or herself to enter into a new relationship with precision and audacity.
And how refreshing that is.
We all want to be a little less lonely, but dating has become diluted, casual, and in a way, aimless. We now go out, hang out, meet up for drinks. Facebook and twitter have softened these romantic interactions all the more — adding someone as a friend or frequently commenting on updates can now be used (or misconstrued) as a show of interest. We like safe terms, non-committal gestures that let us passively build up to a maybe, that we may or may not act on. I find most cowardly the use of “friendship” to test the water for what was once a direct, well-intended social process: courtship. That was an engaging romantic activity that had a definite goal: to get an answer, from both parties, whether it be a yes or a no.
We don’t like being definite these days. Maybe that’s why it’s also become so difficult to commit to the answer (the yes or the no). We like gray areas, and usually get into things with one foot out of the door. Most of us are muddled even while we seek; we have a lot of peripherals. I once dated a guy who made his intentions clear from day one (that it was a clear yes for him), and I cherished that.
A love interest is just that — a romance partner. Someone to romance, to be giddy over, and vice-versa. A crush who crushes you back and says so. It can deepen into love and a true partnership, but that’s another story. And the yes (or no) that we get from courtship or dating is just a decision to pursue (or not) that other story.
I saw a good movie the other day. It’s been a while since I smiled at the movie house. Celebrated friendship of a young, natural kind — the effortless, foundational friends we encounter earlier in life but carry with us forever.
Forever’s a cheesy word when we let it be one, but really, it’s beautiful. They say nothing lasts forever, but we are here. We witness the change, we flow. We’ve flowed from day 1, from even before we started counting days, and will keep doing that. And it’s a we, not an I.
Friendships change, we change, and it’s neither good nor bad. When we come across people who can look at us and see this flow of forever in us and in them at the same time — wow, that’s a WOW.
That movie made it tangible for me again — that one line that struck me the first time I read it: Friendship marks a life even more deeply than love. By Elie Wiesel. And infinity — to touch it or feel it, or just witness it, be in the same space or moment as it, and to see faces of people next to you who are just as taken in — these faces you will carry with you forever, and they you.
